DataCore asked 477 IT professionals currently using or evaluating software-defined storage technology about their 2015 spending plans (relating to storage software enabling freedom from hardware lock-in) and other areas.

OpenStack is being ignored by 70 per cent of the respondents. More than half have no public cloud storage spending plans this year. Half are not putting money into Big Data or object storage.

VDI is of interest to only 49 per cent, while flash storage is a minority interest with less than 30 per cent of the respondents interested in spending in that area.

Can we generalise these results to all IT professionals, or is there something special about SW-defined storage buyers?

Here’s the table of results in the other areas category:

The survey showed people are looking at SDS to extend the life of existing storage assets, avoid hardware lock-in and automate storage operations (52, 49 and 45 per cent respectively).

El Reg thinks these concerns may discourage them from buying new storage hardware and silos. They are not representative of the overall IT buying population and DataCore's results can't really be generalised.

DataCore’s 2015 State of Software-Defined Storage Survey was conducted in April 2015, and you can view the report here (PDF). ®